Wild Wild Death (4 page)

“That bal had home run written al over it, and their center fielder never should have been able to jump like that and catch it. Damn!” He slapped a hand against the leg of his jeans. “The Cleveland Indians are cursed.”

“You got that right, brother!” The man sitting behind us leaned forward and put a hand on Quinn’s shoulder. Not a good move. Even I knew that. A cop is a cop is a cop. Even a cop who isn’t working at the moment because he got shot a couple months earlier and is stil out on disability leave. Always suspicious—even when there was nothing to be suspicious of—Quinn shrugged out from under the man’s hand, spun in his seat, and gave the guy a quick once-over.

Apparently, the Cleveland Indians bal cap, red sweatshirt with the big blue
I
on it, and bag of peanuts in his hand indicated the man seated behind us was one of the good guys. Quinn didn’t so much smile at him as he rumbled—in a friendly sort of way that made it clear they were in this together. “It happens every year.” Quinn’s face was somber when he and the man exchanged knowing looks.

“Spring training comes and the team looks great.

Then the season starts and they play like—”

“Yeah, like I said.” The man’s sigh rose into the clear blue sky over our heads, an unheard prayer.

“They’re cursed.”

The next inning was about to start and the players came onto the field. Grumbling, Quinn turned back to the game. “I thought this summer was going to be different.”

This, I understood.

I thought this summer was going to be different, too.

It was my turn to sigh. Not that I was about to let Quinn hear the frustration that bubbled in me like the fizz in the Diet Pepsi I was drinking. Pepper Martin does not keep her opinions—or her feelings—to herself. Unless those opinions and feelings reveal her weaknesses.

And when it came to Quinn and what had happened a couple months before…

Okay, I admit it, I was feeling… wel , maybe
weak
wasn’t the right word. Maybe
helpless
was more like it. Or
frustrated.
Or
sick and tired of beating around
the bush and always ending up back where we
started.

Yeah, that was it.

Sick and tired of beating around the bush and always ending up back where we started, I turned in my seat just enough to make it clear to Quinn that I wasn’t as interested in watching our pitiful team drag its way through to another loss as I was in talking.

To him.

Now.

I put a hand on the arm of his navy windbreaker.

Sure, it was summer. But this was Cleveland, and there’s an old joke in these parts about how if you don’t like the weather, al you have to do is wait around for a minute. True to form, it had been in the eighties earlier in the day and who could blame me for being thril ed about showing off the scoop-neck, ruffle-front, multicolored sundress I’d gotten for a steal at Filene’s Basement.

Then, just an hour before Quinn picked me up for the game, a front blew through and a wind off the lake brought cool Canadian air streaming our way.

“It’s not about warmth,” I’d told Quinn when he warned me I’d be more comfortable at the he warned me I’d be more comfortable at the stadium near the lakefront in jeans and a sweatshirt.

“It’s about fashion.”

I was fashionable, al right.

As long as nobody noticed the goose bumps that marched up my arms.

But have no fear, even the shiver that raced over my nearly bare shoulders wasn’t enough to distract me. I leaned in close so Quinn couldn’t fail to catch the scent of my Happy perfume. “We need to talk,” I said.

He slid me a look. For about a second and a half.

That was when he went back to watching the game. “About… ?”

It was my turn to grumble. “You know what it’s about. About how you got shot by that murder suspect.”

“He’s behind bars where he belongs and I’m fine.” That was that. Or at least that’s the message he sent since Quinn never bothered to take his eyes off the field.

But I am a redhead, remember, and not so easily put off.

I tightened my hold on his jacket. “That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it. You know it, because I’ve tried to talk to you about this like…” I real y didn’t have to stop to consider how many times I’d brought up the subject because I figured, by now, we were talking dozens. At least. I paused, anyway, the better to draw out the drama while the pitcher threw, the batter didn’t swing, and the umpire cal ed a bal , a decision the Indians fans around us disputed loud and long.

“I’ve tried to talk to you about this since it happened,” I reminded Quinn even though I shouldn’t have had to. “I’m not talking about how you got shot.

I’m talking about how when you got shot, you died.

For just a couple minutes, anyway. I’m talking about how I was home that night, and how you showed up in my living room and told me what happened to you.

I’m talking about those few minutes, Quinn. You know, when you were a ghost.”

“Did you see that?” Quinn was out of his seat faster than should have been possible for a guy who’d been mortal y wounded just a few short months before. His groan was echoed by those of the other fans seated around us. He dropped back into his seat. “An error. The guy hit the bal and it went right through the third baseman’s glove. A frickin’ error.”

“You mean
another
error.” The fan in the row behind us threw his scorecard on the ground in frustration. “That’s the second one this game and the second time the White Sox have scored thanks to the fact that our guys can’t catch a bal .”

“Or a break,” Quinn growled.

The guy behind us agreed. “Hel , that’s no surprise. We haven’t won a World Series since 1948. And it’s al because of that damned curse.”

Not my problem, though from the way he nodded in agreement, Quinn apparently thought it was his.

“That Indian,” he said, and since he glanced at me when he said this, I figured he wasn’t talking about one of the players on the field, “the one who put the curse on Cleveland. He’s buried in your cemetery, isn’t he?”

This time, I had no reservations about showing my ticked-off-ness. Quinn should have known better than to bring up a subject that was stil plenty sore. I narrowed my eyes and shot him a look, my teeth clenched.

“It’s not my cemetery anymore.”

“Of course. I know that.” This was his way of apologizing, and it wasn’t good enough. “I keep forgetting you got laid off.”

“Dumped, you mean.” I crossed my arms over my chest. It was the perfect way to display my displeasure, and besides, it helped keep me a tad warmer. “When you get laid off, there’s some expectation of getting cal ed back to work. Garden View Cemetery—”

“Don’t take is so personal y. You know what El a says—”

“That the cemetery is cutting costs. Sure.” I knew this like I knew my own name, because in the two months I’d been out of work, I’d heard El a, my former boss, tel me al about it with tears in her voice every time she cal ed me. Which was every day.

Sure, I understood the party line. Times were tough. Budgets were tight. Costs had to be kept in line, and around Garden View, that meant getting rid of staff.

Me.

That didn’t make the sting of losing my job any less painful. Not that I’m a geek like El a and actual y less painful. Not that I’m a geek like El a and actual y like working in a cemetery. But there is the whole paycheck thing. Getting by on my unemployment check and the monthly payment I stil got from helping out a ghost’s granddaughter a couple years back wasn’t easy. It was putting a cramp on my lifestyle, not to mention my ability to stay fashion-forward.

“Besides, Goodshot Gomez isn’t buried at Garden View, he’s interred.”

Quinn finished watching the next play before he asked, “Who?”

“The Indian.” I sounded as exasperated as al the basebal fans around me. For al different reasons.

“You’re the one who brought it up.”

“The curse. The Indian.” Quinn nodded. “The one in your cemetery. The legend says that with his dying breath, he said he had to be taken back to New Mexico, and if he was buried anywhere else, that place would be cursed.”

“Only he’s not…” I control ed a screech, but just barely, and used my best tour-guide voice. I congratulated myself—two months and I could stil fake my way through sounding like I knew what I was talking about. “Technical y, Goodshot Gomez isn’t buried. His casket is kept in a mausoleum. That means his body isn’t in the ground. It’s inside this fancy-dancy little marble building. He was in town as part of some Wild West show, you know. And he died here. And his friends left money at Garden View so the cemetery would keep his body until they came back for him and took him to New Mexico.”

Even when I had a tour group in front of me, this was always an
Ew!
moment for me, and I shivered now like I always did back at the cemetery when I told the story. “Only they never returned for him. Nobody knows why. And there was this mausoleum that somebody had built and never finished paying for so the cemetery used Goodshot’s money and put him in there. His casket is kept in the mausoleum on a sort of platform.”

“I think it’s cal ed a bier.”

“How would you know that?”

A smile tugged one corner of Quinn’s mouth. “I hang out with a cemetery tour guide.”

“A former cemetery tour guide.”

He patted my knee. “Former cemetery tour guide.”

“Who talks to the dead.”

It wasn’t exactly subtle, but I was long past toeing the line. For my sake as wel as for Quinn’s. I am not, after al , stupid. Deep in my heart, I know that people have to accept me for who I am without external proof. I wish Quinn would have just believed me back when I final y admitted that I keep getting mixed up in his cases because I’ve got this goofy Gift and it’s nonreturnable and the ghosts I deal with tel me they’l haunt me for the rest of my life if I don’t help them.

But that wasn’t how it worked, and then Quinn final y did have… wel , I guess it wasn’t living proof… but it was proof. That’s for sure. He did final y have proof that I was tel ing the truth, and it was time for him to man up and admit it.

“We’ve got to talk about it, Quinn,” I said. “When I told you I talk to the dead and solve their mysteries, you walked out on me, remember?” I guess he did because his green eyes flashed. “But then you died.

And you were a ghost. At least for a little while. And you came to me and you told me where the cops could find the guy who shot you. I couldn’t make up that kind of information and get it right, could I? That proves the experience was real. That I real y do talk to the dead. We need to talk about this, Quinn, partly because I need to hear from you that you don’t think I’m a nutcase, but mostly because you can’t keep something like this bottled up inside you. You were dead!”

“As dead as this team, and it’s only June!” I guess while I was busy passionately defending my position, some more bad stuff happened out on the field because Quinn slumped back in his seat and the people around us groaned, got to their feet, and headed for the exits. “Another loss for the record books,” he said.

And another go-nowhere, solve-nothing, can’t-get-passed-it conversation between me and the guy I once thought was the man of my dreams.

There was no use prolonging the evening; I got to my feet, too, and headed up the steps to the main concourse of the stadium with Quinn right behind me. At the top of the steps, a brisk breeze whipped my curly hair and a new batch of goose bumps erupted up my arms and across my shoulders.

Quinn’s not a cop for nothing. He’s pretty good when it comes to noticing things. “Here.” He already had his windbreaker off and he draped it over my had his windbreaker off and he draped it over my shoulders. “I’m tired of watching you shiver, so don’t give me any bul about who might see you looking like a dork in my jacket.”

I was too chil y to argue.

I slipped my arms into the jacket, snapped it shut, a nd warmth enveloped me along with the scent of Quinn’s expensive aftershave. My mood brightened.

At least for as long as it took us to get out onto the street. Right outside the stadium, there was a knot of people around a man with a microphone and a woman dressed in a buckskin dress and a feathered headdress.

“I could put a stop to the curse,” the woman said.

Her dark hair was done up in braids that hung over her shoulders, and she had a dozen strands of beads around her neck that reminded me of the jewelry El a liked to wear. She was holding a smoldering bunch of smel y herbs and she raised her arm and waved the smoke toward the stadium. “I come here every game and do my best to try and clear the bad vibrations around the team, but if the cemetery where Goodshot is buried would just al ow me to perform a corn ceremony at his grave, I know I could lift the curse. The city of Cleveland needs my help. The Cleveland Indians need my help. I’m pleading to the people in charge of the cemetery. If you’d just let me in to do the ceremony, I can turn this city around!”

“Let’s see what this disappointed Indians fan thinks.” The reporter was in front of me and his microphone was in my face so fast, I never had a chance to duck out of the way. Too bad. At least then I could have shrugged out of Quinn’s jacket so I didn’t look like a complete fashion moron on the eleven-o’clock news.